Note: This is the text of my speech prepared for the Louis Dudek Tribute held in the Writers' Chapel at St. Jax Church, 1439 Sainte-Catherine Street West, Montreal, Quebec H3G 1S6, on 12 October 2018.
Louis
Dudek was one of the most generous people I have known; his generosity touched
many people in significant ways. For me, he wrote an introduction to my first
book of poems; because of his letters of reference I was awarded several Canada
Council writing grants and I was hired to teach English literature at Champlain
Regional College where I taught for 35 years; but the most important gift was
his generous spirit, that he gave freely of himself. He was a wonderful person,
a friend, a teacher, and a mentor, and we all miss him. I enrolled as a
graduate student at McGill University in 1974 because I wanted to study with
Louis Dudek and it was one of the best decisions I've made in my life. This
evening we honour Louis, one of our greatest poets, he enriched many people's
lives, my own included.
I must tell you of a meeting I had
with Dudek on March 10, 1975 because it is still important to me. At this
meeting in his office he read some of my poems which he liked very much. There
is no time to go in to the details of the meeting but Louis gave me something that
afternoon that only an older poet can give to a younger poet; I was 24 years
old at the time, and what he gave me was confirmation that I was a poet. I left
that meeting feeling that I had nothing to worry about, just keep writing and
life as a poet would unfold. And that's what I did. The day on which that
meeting took place becomes more poignant for me, my father died in 1956 and
March 10th was his birthday.
Another event—it was the afternoon of
January 9, 1979—I was with Louis Dudek and Lionel Kearns, who named his son "Louis"
after Louis Dudek. We had something to eat at a food court after Lionel’s
reading. My then wife was pregnant but was not expecting to give birth for another
four weeks. This was the one time I went off by myself, other than going to
work, while my wife was pregnant. I arrived home around 5 p.m., the flat on
Northcliffe Avenue was in darkness, and I found an almost illegible note
scribbled by my mother-in-law telling me to go to the hospital, my son had been
born prematurely. This is where I was when my son was born, not in the birthing
room at a major hospital, but with Louis Dudek and Lionel Kearns talking about poetry
in a food court in downtown Montreal. Life
can be very strange.
Think of Louis' contribution to
Canadian poetry. On my book shelf I have almost forty books either written by
Louis or about his writing. His books have been an inspiration to many people,
they communicate an infectious love for poetry. There are several selected
poems; books of his criticism and book reviews; his thoughts on poetry; his
epigrams; his 1941 diary; a book on philosophy and another on the mass media;
also, several anthologies of poetry that he edited, one that was widely used as
a college text book and another one co-edited with Irving Layton; and a
collection of texts and essays that he edited with Michael Gnarowski; a book on "CIV/n", a literary magazine edited
by his future wife, Aileen Collins, in the 1950s; also his 1967 "First
Person in Literature" talks that were broadcast on CBC radio's "Ideas"
programme; and don't forget his book of letters from his friend Ezra Pound.
There is also Frank Davey's book on the poetry of Louis Dudek and Raymond
Souster; special issues of at least two periodicals dedicated to his work;
Robin Blaser's excellent selection of Dudek's poetry; a book remembering and honouring
Louis, Eternal Conversation; and
Susan Stromberg-Steins' biography of Louis Dudek. Susan and I were in Dudek's
graduate seminar in the fall-winter semester, 1974-75. He was certainly the
best and most influential teacher I ever had; I learned so much from being
Dudek's student and friend, things he said to me decades ago are still remembered
today.
Dudek is a poet whose major work, Continuation, a long poem that he worked
on for over forty years, will one day be better recognized for its importance. Dudek began writing Continuation when he was 49 years old, a month later he turned
fifty; however, the concept for how to write the poem was discovered by Dudek
in 1956, when he was only thirty-eight years old. Dudek tells us that he could
only write Continuation after he
discovered his authentic voice, one that was a memory of his thought processes
when he was a child. With this in mind, Continuation
is Dudek’s life-long work. The theme of Continuation
is poetry, what it means, its importance, and the poet's dedication to his work;
indeed, poetry is Dudek's religion. When he championed Ezra Pound, and he told
me he never convinced anyone to like Pound's Cantos, what he really championed was great poetry.
I remember Louis showing me the
manuscript of his Epigrams before it was published, typed on onion
skin paper, in his office at McGill. The key to Continuation, and the foundation on which the poem is written, are
Dudek's epigrams. Dudek writes, “Epigrams are one-line poems. A lot of them
together are like a long poem” (Dudek, 1975, p. 38). That “long poem” is Continuation.
Another key to Continuation is Dudek's
admiration for Henry Miller; Louis' ideal for his own poetry is to write in the
conversational style of Henry Miller but always maintaining the critical
faculty of Matthew Arnold. In Continuation Dudek is able to combine
what he learned from Miller and Arnold in order to communicate his poetic
vision.
Louis Dudek devoted his life to writing poems, to the
literary community, to teaching, and to his family and friends. I am grateful
for having known him, he changed my life for the better and what greater praise
can be given to a fellow human than that they changed your life, they made it
better, they helped you fulfill your promise and destiny? It is an honour to
have known Louis Dudek and to have contributed this evening to this Dudek
Tribute.
-- Stephen Morrissey
